As I said on Geekzone, I shall laugh myself silly if he now buggers off to Germany ;-)

Given his line of work, he's probably going to be a bit stir-crazy even without a jail sentence...

Judge Dawson granted bail to his Coatesville house with the conditions that he did not have access the internet, no helicopter be allowed to travel to the property, that he would not travel more than 80km from the property and that he give police 24 hours notice of any appointment that required him to leave the property, except for medical emergencies.

The dramatic shut-down of Megaupload and arrest of its founder Kim “Dotcom” last week may not have entirely been about piracy, according reports in a variety of publications, including TechCrunch and Time magazine......many sources speculate it was actually the impending launch of Megabox that added the most fuel to the fire, as Dotcom himself had described the service as a major iTunes competitor.

According to AP, US prosecutors blocked access to Megaupload and charged seven men, saying the site facilitated millions of illegal downloads of movies, music and other content. Notice the word facilitated which comes straight from the vocabulary of Big Content.

So who are the Mega Conspirators again?.Good luck Kimbo, I, for one, will be looking forward to your next party.;-)

This one has been floating round for a few weeks, but I don't put anything in it. They hadn't properly launched Megabox yet and had only started talking about it in November IIRC. If this investigation has been in train for 2 years (and the indictment shows a hell of a lot of research that I doubt even the FBI could pull off in the weeks between Thanskgiving and Xmas), then the timing is purely coincidental.

That the language proposed by Big Content is turning up in legal documents is hardly a surprise. They've been trying to frame this in terms favourable to them all along. (I also think you'll find the word "facilitated" in many other prosecutions launched by the USG, so that's no biggie either)

Global shipping line Maersk yesterday announced a penalty charge for freight crossing Auckland’s wharves, as more than 300 port workers began a three-week strike… …Ports of Auckland chief executive Tony Gibson said the surcharge was not unexpected

Mr Gibson has had 30 years experience in shipping and logistics, first with Seabridge in Wellington, and then with Nedlloyd and P&O Nedlloyd. He worked in various roles in Africa, Asia and Europe, including as European Director of Customer Operations, Rotterdam, before being appointed Managing Director, New Zealand and Pacific Islands in 2002. Following a takeover by Maersk, Mr Gibson served as Managing Director of Maersk, New Zealand for three years.

Quite, his background is in the freight side, not the port side...Auckland has a cuckoo in the nest, he is there to dismantle the old Wharf culture and hand it to the shippers on a platter (or in a container), Aucklanders (the owners) will be the ultimate losers, both in cashflow and karma...

One of the striking features of the demonstrations against ACTA that took place across Europe over the last few weeks was the youth of the participants. That's not to say that only young people are concerned about ACTA, but it's an indication that they take its assault on the Internet very personally -- unlike, perhaps, older and more dispassionate critics.

[...]

We grew up with the Internet and on the Internet. This is what makes us different; this is what makes the crucial, although surprising from your point of view, difference: we do not ‘surf’ and the internet to us is not a ‘place’ or ‘virtual space’. The Internet to us is not something external to reality but a part of it: an invisible yet constantly present layer intertwined with the physical environment. We do not use the Internet, we live on the Internet and along it. If we were to tell our bildnungsroman to you, the analog, we could say there was a natural Internet aspect to every single experience that has shaped us. We made friends and enemies online, we prepared cribs for tests online, we planned parties and studying sessions online, we fell in love and broke up online. The Web to us is not a technology which we had to learn and which we managed to get a grip of. The Web is a process, happening continuously and continuously transforming before our eyes; with us and through us. Technologies appear and then dissolve in the peripheries, websites are built, they bloom and then pass away, but the Web continues, because we are the Web; we, communicating with one another in a way that comes naturally to us, more intense and more efficient than ever before in the history of mankind.

Leitch said he was asked to open his computer bag, then his laptop and enter his password.

"There were a lot of emails regarding the trip.

Are they allowed to do that? I guess they can do as they like, if you kick up a fuss you don't get in so you have no comeback.It does raise the question though. Was this just an overly obnoxious Customs person overstepping the mark or is there pressure on them to do the bidding of the FBI?